Who is the fastest in “Forest Tale”?

Last weekend, another ski competition was held on the slopes of the Oi-Qaragai (“Forest Fairy Tale”) resort, in which children aged eight to sixteen competed for the title of the fastest and most nimble.

In the fall, weather forecasters predicted a warm and snowy winter. They guessed right with the first part of their forecast, but the second part misfired – in the southern and southeastern parts of the country with snow, everything is still very, very sad. And if in the city you can only put up with this, then at the ski resorts they have long learned to overcome the vagaries of nature.

When snow is not falling from the sky, nothing prevents you from sketching it from below. For this purpose, all resorts in the world have snow generators – special installations that turn water into artificial snow. There are more than 50 such installations in OiQaragai, on average they produce about 150 thousand cubic meters of artificial snow per season. This allows, even in current weather conditions, not only to create a cover for simple skiing, but also to build full-fledged tracks for competitions.

In particular, on January 13, 2024, the second Oi-Qaragai competition for children this year took place on the slopes of the Trans-Ili Alatau. The first race was held in a night format. Interestingly, such an experience was implemented for the first time both at this resort and in Kazakhstan as a whole. Previously, all competitions took place exclusively during the daytime.

The competition was held according to the rules of ENL (Entry League – entry-level competitions). The length of the track was 230 meters, skiers had to go through 21 turns. More than 80 children born in 2008 – 2016 took part in the discipline. All of them are students of sports ski clubs. It is worth noting that the main pool of participants included representatives of Ski-Team Oi-Qaragai and Shymbulak Ski and Sports Club. Many of them already have achievements. The Ski-Team Oi-Qaragai sports club has been in existence for four years and has 50 people, of which five are candidates for master of sports, many have sports ranks.

The peculiarity of the slalom discipline, in contrast to parallel slalom or mass starts, is that here your main opponent is yourself. That is, all participants go through the route one by one at a certain interval. In such conditions, the result depends on how technically competent the skier will “steer”, whether he will not give up at high speed on a turn, and whether he will be able to maintain a state of inner calm during competitions.

Of course, such competitions are not complete without unfortunate falls – one mistake, and the skier is already rolling head over heels down the slope. But this is also a useful experience, which, with proper analysis and analysis of mistakes, will allow you to avoid similar withdrawals from the race in the future.

Prize-winners were determined in five age categories. In the overall ranking, the fastest among the boys was Denis Shevchenko (age category 2010 – 2011), a student of Ski team Oi-Qaragai, the only one who “went beyond the minute”, finishing in two attempts with a total of 00:59.83 milliseconds. Among the girls, the best time was shown by a student of the Shymbulak Ski And Sports Club school, Rimma Samodelkina (age category 2012 – 2013), who covered the same distance in 01:01.29 milliseconds.

Such competitions are a clear indicator of the commitment of the Oi-Qaragai resort to moving towards improving the health of the nation, popularizing skiing and a healthy lifestyle. The sports club conducts professional training camps and training sessions, which in the future makes it possible to forge world-class champions.

Yes, unlike European slopes, Kazakh resorts are very limited in scale, but active work is being done in this direction. Let us remind you that back in December in Almaty, the official signing of a Memorandum on creating the necessary conditions and supporting the Oi-Qaragai resort development project between the Akimat of the Almaty region and a group of investors took place. The amount of attracted investments amounted to more than 58 billion tenge with phased implementation until 2028. The subject of the memorandum is the establishment of partnerships and the identification of activities necessary for the implementation of the project “Expansion of the Oi-Qaragai mountain resort on the Aktas plateau.” As part of the phased development, it is planned to build gondola and chairlift cable cars, increase the length of ski slopes to 55 kilometers, equip ski slopes, sites for paragliding, glamping, infrastructure buildings, restaurants, lakes and an ethnic town for guests from all over the world.